Introduction
I have the world's worst birthdays.
This is not a small bit of hyperbole in order to gain sympathy or otherwise prove some sort of misguided point where one earns credit for being the most pathetic. It's merely a point of fact. It's not even a coincidence at this point, or the byproduct of self-fulfilling prophecy. It seriously does not matter what I do - I can leave town, I can wear lucky charms... Hell, I can EAT Lucky Charms and it has no effect. One year, I actually locked myself in a room with a stack of DVDs and enough food to last out the day.
When I finally turned the phones back on, I got a call saying that the appeal we filed on a five-year lawsuit regarding the property line of our house was lost, thus finally flushing away nearly $45,000 we'd spent trying to get the original owners to just admit they lied to us.
It finds me no matter where I go or what I do. But there is one interesting byproduct - it produces some pretty insane stories.
So, in honor of my birthday this week, I'd like to share with you the top five worst birthdays I feel like sharing with you.
#5
I looked up just in time to see the clock tick through the three seconds it needed to get through to officially be two o'clock in the morning. With all of the energy I could muster, I inhaled deeply; the antiseptic smell of the hospital burning my nostrils. I held the breath for a moment while I pondered the concept that, after nearly four hours of exposure, one would expect the nostrils and lungs to be adjusted to the burn and odor of the iodine in the air. I immediately concluded that if one thought this, one was clearly very, very wrong. With that realization, I exhaled a deep sigh.
It wasn't a sigh of resignation, which I'd sighed around one o'clock that morning... And it wasn't a sigh of frustration, which I'd sighed at midnight. No, this was simply one of those meaningless sighs you exhale to pass the time; a sort of mental marker that the moment has come and gone when what little hope that you might ever actually see a doctor has finally died.
Mike looked over at me and half-smirked half-frowned at me, indicating that he, too, had just experienced the same mourning of an unanswered prayer. I shrugged in response and shifted my weight slightly, allowing the slats in the uncomfortable hunks of wood they called chairs to numb a different buttock for a while. Just as I did, a pair of young, hyper-energetic children raced past where we sat, slightly jostling my left elbow as they ran by.
I winced in response to the firey jolt that shot through my left hand and tore through my body. I grit my teeth to keep from yelping like a hobbled puppy. I gripped my left wrist tightly in an effort to keep the pounding in my veins from reaching the spot in the meaty part of my left hand where two-thirds of an X-acto knife blade rested comfortably in its impromptu home. The white gauze pad lightly taped across the entry wound began to grow red as the overworked platelets at the wound site finally said "fuck it", shrugged their shoulders, and gave up working to keep this damn cut from bleeding all over the place.
Mike noticed my reaction to this and was about to offer both his concern for my well-being and any services he could perform to help me in the situation, but just as he opened his mouth, an ambulance's siren began blaring just outside the window where we sat. His orange-marker-covered face immediately squinted tight as he cupped his ears with his orange-marker-covered hands. Instinctively, I raised my black-marker-covered hands to do the same, but as soon as I lifted my left black-marker-and-blood-covered hand, another jolt of pain shot through my arm.
I winced and began breathing heavily in response to my hand suddenly exploding. Without even thinking about it, I replaced the right hand that had gone to protect my right ear back on my left wrist which, clearly, needed the aid more than my poor eardrums. The ambulance sped away, taking its blaring siren with it, which was good. Just as it got out of earshot, a small baby - who, thank God, had FINALLY fallen asleep on his redneck mother's oversized breast - awoke and decided to take up the ambulance's challenge on who could blow out the most eardrums. He let loose with both barrels.
I'd thought that my eyes were already shut as tightly as they could be, but somehow, I was able to squeeze out just a tiny bit more space and shut them even tighter. Another sigh escaped my lungs so quickly, I couldn't determine what kind of sigh it was. The throbbing in my hand made its way up my arm and into my brain as my head began pounding with the warning signs of an oncoming migraine.
I opened my eyes to find one of the small children who'd ran past earlier standing beside my chair and looking over my outstretched left palm. "EEEEW!" she screamed as she looked up at me. I looked at her without a word. She then ran away.
The television began playing the unmistakable over-processed jangling guitar notes that foretold the introduction of yet another Mexican soap opera. A door to my right opened and the sound of a freshly flushed toilet could be heard just beyond its threshold. Short bursts of vulgarity began ringing through the other side of the windows, then very loudly through the waiting room as two police officers half-escorted, half-carried an incredibly argumentative drunk man who was bleeding from the forehead. Without a single word, the officers walked him past the waiting room and down to the welcoming arms of the auxiliary Clayton County Police precinct inside the hospital itself, just as their brothers in blue had done to the previous four inebriated or high individuals who'd found themselves in similar situations that evening.
The baby kept yelling.
Another ambulance pulled up to the dock, sirens blaring and engine roaring. The clack of a stretcher slamming against the double doors leading into the reception area echoed through the waiting room. The children that were running rampant began yelling for their parents to look at the damaged and bloodied person wheeling at high speed through the hallways leading to where I longed to be. I couldn't help but think that, even though his wounds were far more grave than my own, he was the lucky one.
This was all my fault.
He was just trying to make this the first birthday in many years that I actually had fun when he took up his black magic marker. And in all fairness, I really should have been paying attention where I was putting my hand when I began stumbling backward... I just needed to regain a little balance, that's all! I couldn't let Mike win this battle! My Sharpie hand was poised for a strike; all I needed was a quick push from my free hand to stop my backward momentum and mount a suitable riposte... I didn't realize that, while screwing around in a fit of boredom, I'd left an uncapped X-acto knife sitting base-down in a lump of sculpting clay...
I closed my eyes once again and let my head drop backwards in utter defeat. I rolled my face to the right and opened my eyes to find Mike, covered in magic marker from our earlier Sharpie duel, looking at me with a mixture of pity and agony. He looked at the floor, sighed, and then looked over at me.
"Dude... I'm really..." He began to say.
"I know, man... I know..." I said with yet another sigh; this one carrying with it the weight of my 23 previous birthdays. We both returned our eyes to the floor and resumed waiting.
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